Enjoy the sea view. Don’t fall in At the end of 2012 I started this blog.…
Mike Robbins
The Red Wall: How Labour lost its safest seats
Britain’s Labour Party lost many of its “safe” seats in 2019. Can it get them back?…
The butler did it!
The butler did it! …Or did he? A trip back into the Golden Age of crime…
If not us, who? If not now, when?
German resistance to the Nazis was not that effective. But it was perhaps more widespread than…
Love in the time of Brexit
The 2016 Brexit referendum divided Britain along class lines. Why? Two novels on Brexit, class and…
The Polish Anne Frank
There will be few more memoirs of the Holocaust from the living. But there may yet…
The first book on the pandemic is here already
Before long we’ll have a tsunami of books about COVID-19. No surprise, perhaps, that Slavoj Žižek…
Two fine new novels inspired by climate change
Climate change and the zeitgeist. Two stories of our time Who is John Truthing? A charismatic…
Travelling to the war
Travel writing is mostly seen as a distinct genre. But travel, war and history can come…
Doctor in Jail
Two recent books give a vivid insight into what goes on in prison. It isn’t pretty It’s…
The endgame in the age of stupid
Could our society collapse? Yes, and I think I know how Consider this as the plot…
The water jump
A hundred years ago today, a large biplane lumbered into the air at St John’s, Newfoundland.…
Why nations fail
In 2012 two economists claimed they knew why countries succeeded or failed. They didn’t. But they…
A coup, and a departure
Sudanese dictator Omar el-Bashir has fallen. I was in Sudan when he staged his own coup.…
The monkey’s benison: Rumer Godden and imperial India
Rumer Godden was one of the most successful writers of her lifetime. Several of her novels,…
Why Europe? Peace. That’s why
The Brexit debate in Britain has been bogged down in bad-tempered arguments about tariffs and the…
It’s all about the bike
We all have things that make life worthwhile, because it is for them that we love…
Diana Athill: Self-scrutiny, and the writer’s world
Happy 101st birthday to Diana Athill. One of the most successful editors of her day, she…
Flying, fighting, writing
There are thousands of memoirs of the Second World War, including the war in the air.…
An anthology of anger
TheAnti-Austerity Anthology brings together some of the best active indie authors in a collection of original…
In northern waters
Grey seas, icebergs, wrecks and whales. A voyage to the St Lawrence, 50 years ago One of the…
Tonight in the House: Murder, booze and buggery
Two funny, yet disturbing, books have me thinking about who really governs Britain – and who…
Inequality and democracy: Can they coexist?
Equality and democracy are closely related. If one declines, what happens to the other? Thoughts on inequality,…